Kentucky’s Secretary of State, Michael Adams, says he is watching closely to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on two cases they heard on Wednesday involving “faithless electors,” members of the Electoral College who don’t vote for the candidate they pledge to support.
In the 2016 Presidential election, Democrat Hilary Clinton lost five electoral votes and Republican Donald Trump lost two, due to faithless electors. This was reportedly the most in U.S. history except for the 1872 election. That’s when 63 of 66 electors pledged to Horace Greeley, the losing candidate, cast their votes for someone else. Greeley had died between Election Day and when the Electoral College met that year.
The issue arose in lawsuits filed by three Hillary Clinton electors in Washington state and one in Colorado who refused to vote for her despite her popular vote win in both states. In so doing, they hoped to persuade enough electors in states won by Trump to choose someone else and deny Trump the presidency.
The federal appeals court in Denver ruled that electors can vote as they please, rejecting arguments that they must choose the popular-vote winner. In Washington, the state Supreme Court upheld a $1,000 fine against the three electors and rejected their claims.
While there has been talk for many years of abolishing the electoral college, Adams says he is one of those who supports keeping it, calling it good for Kentucky, because it gives rural states a fair say in the process when it comes to President.
“The bigger reason is, imagine if you had vote fraud or some sort of emergency situation, or even just a recount like in Florida. Imagine a recount in just one state, versus a recount in all 50 states. You would take Florida national in 2000, if you had no Electoral College. You want to be able to confine your issues, whatever they are, to one state.”
“But the Electoral College doesn’t work if the electors don’t actually have to follow the will of the people. I want the electors in Kentucky to follow the will of the people of Kentucky. Same thing for California, Colorado, Maine, or anywhere else. Otherwise, what’s the point? Why are we having the election? Why are we asking the public to weigh in on it?”
Adams notes there is no requirement for electors in Kentucky to vote for the person they are pledged to support. “The law says that each party submits their list of electors and then the party who wins the popular vote for President, you use their electors. But once those electors sit in the Supreme Court chamber, they can write whatever name they want to as their vote.”
He says he is not aware that there has ever been a faithless elector in the state, “But in Kentucky, there is literally nothing that I or anybody can do to compel an elector to vote for Donald Trump, even if he wins the popular vote in our state.”
The U. S. Supreme Court is expected to hand down their ruling by the end of June.
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Written by Tom Latek. Cross-posted from Kentucky Today.